


oh, take me back to the start

by fulmentus



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: F/F, an attempt to get into petra's head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 13:25:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14426355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fulmentus/pseuds/fulmentus
Summary: Petra is no stranger to loss. To losing people, to people walking away from her.But watching JR leave, words and lies and pain sitting between them,I never want to see you againhitting Petra like a pile of bricks, hurts more than Petra could have ever imagined.





	oh, take me back to the start

Petra is no stranger to loss. To losing people, to people walking away from her.

She watched her mother scoff and turn away from her, disdainful and disappointed, more times than she’s bothered to count. She stood by, frustrated, as Rafael constantly flitted in and out of her life, falling in and out of love with her. Experienced her own fluctuating friendship with Jane, the push and pull.

She used to not _care_ as much.

But watching JR leave, words and lies and pain sitting between them,  _I never want to see you again_  hitting Petra like a pile of bricks, hurts more than Petra could have ever imagined.

Because she’s never felt this before — this cinching around her throat, this burn in her eyes, this pressure between her ribs, weighing against her heart — never felt heartbreak like this.

(With Rafael, it was a dull ache. A desperation of losing something she needed, something her _mother_ needed.

Money to keep Milos away, money to keep running from a past that will never leave.)

(Falling in love with Rafael was never the plan, but the cracking of JR’s voice right before she turned away hurt far more than watching Rafael fall in love with Jane.)

And Petra knows, god she _knows_ , that this is her own fault. That she shouldn’t have kept this from JR, shouldn’t have let the lie settle and fester beneath her skin, tie her tongue and lock her throat, but her _daughters—_

Anezka threatened Ellie and Anna, and how could Petra do anything but protect them? Protect herself?

She’s a survivor. She’s used to doing everything herself, keeping everyone at arm’s length because if she lets them any closer, _she_ is the one who is going to hurt.

But with JR — JR broke down every wall Magda taught Petra to erect, blew every expectation Petra had in a partner out of the water. JR walked into her life and was determined to stay, gave up her _job_ so that the case could finally be closed.

And Petra can’t breathe passed that part. Can’t stop repeating it over and over and over because oh, her chest _aches_ with it. A pressure pushing and pushing against her ribs, and she curls into herself.

Wraps her arms around herself and lowers her head.

Her breath stutters once, twice, and she draws it back, closes her eyes against the sting. JR is gone. Gone, gone, gone, footsteps long since receded from the hallway.

(At least with Rafael he was still tied to her someway — with the girls, with the Marbella.

But JR — _Jane_ — she could walk as far as she wanted, and Petra was helpless to stop her from doing just that.)

Magda would laugh, Petra’s sure, if she saw her now. Laugh perhaps out of satisfaction, or perhaps bitterly, mockingly. _I taught you better than this._

Petra tightens her grip on her arms, feels her nails leave imprints in her skin, air like knives in her lungs whenever she so much as tries to breathe. Scraping and clawing against her throat, and she wants to scream, to feel the raw tear of her voice.

She just wanted to keep her family safe, her _daughters_ , the one thing in her life that Petra knows for sure she didn’t mess up completely, knows that she didn’t fail or destroy or corrupt. She wanted to keep her sister, her mother, away from them. But she never wanted — JR getting disbarred was never a part of that.

JR sacrificing for her, for _Petra_ , is something she never accounted for. And now it’s gone and blown itself up in her face, and it feels all the world like her mother leaning over her, hissing in her ear, _I told you so_.

She shivers, gets up because that _damn_ window is open again.

And when she shuts it, hears her door creak open and turns to find a gun pointed at her, sees a face that she hasn’t seen in so long, Petra thinks back to the morning, to JR’s warmth pressed against her own, goofy smiles and _I’m in love with you_ , and oh how did she let herself get here?

“Oh my god,” she breathes, because what else is Petra supposed to say when she’s faced with a gun, staring down the barrel to her own death. She’s already vulnerable, her throat tight and her voice hardly steady. Left herself wide open. “It’s _you_.”

The gun shifts, cutting through the shadows of the room, and Petra instinctively recoils, folds in on herself and squeezes her eyes shut.

(She can protect her daughters from danger, but she can hardly protect herself from heartbreak.

From death itself.)

JR storms through the doors before the gun can even fire, and Petra, Petra unfreezes, backs away slightly, and screams when a shot fires, when the body collapses to the floor. Chest heaving, hand shaking, shaking against her lips, Petra brings her eyes up.

Meets JR’s. And it’s, oh it’s deep and brown and not at all as warm as they were that morning. Petra reads worry there, catches the flashes of concern behind a host of hurt and betrayal — and anger, that’s there, too.

It’s almost enough to make Petra flinch again, but she doesn’t because Petra doesn’t _cower._ She straightens her spine, digs her heels in, snarls back — it’s what she’s been taught, how she _survives_. But with JR flicking her gaze over her, concerned despite the fight they just had, Petra can’t muster the energy.

JR’s arm twitches at her side, as though to reach for her, the unspoken _are you okay_ spanning the distance between them, but she reels back. Takes a step away from the body, away from Petra, and oh, Petra doesn’t hide her wince this time. Doesn’t smother the sharp inhale of breath, the desperation still tugging violently between her ribs.

She doesn’t do this well. Truth, laying herself bare.

Doesn’t seek forgiveness well. Because with Rafael — and even with the other Jane — she knew at least on a fundamental level that they’re bonded through family, through the children they share.

But the terror, the trembling she feels now, the quiver that runs through her body, a tumultuous undercurrent ready to tear apart the seams that barely hold her together, is _new_.

Petra has never once longed for something like this, cared enough. Never longed for forgiveness, to take everything back because oh, she messed up _horribly_. It’s in her nature, her immediate defense to snap and hide, to lie in order to _protect_.

And she doesn’t want to lose the feeling that’s been building and building in her chest because of that — the warmth and security that JR’s mere presence possesses. Doesn’t want to lose the _I love yous_ and breathless laughter, the heady kisses, that all seems so far away from where they are now.

The line between them thickens and darkens, and the words that hang heavy on Petra’s tongue, the tears that cling to her eyelashes, remain steadfast, stubbornly clogging her throat and blurring the peripherals of her vision.

“J—” Barely a syllable makes it passed her lips, a strangled, wet croak against the silence, but JR shakes her head, holds a hand up to stop her.

“Don’t,” she says, and she won’t look at Petra again, averts her eyes entirely. There’s still a body on the floor, blood staining the floorboards, the wheezing sound of breath reaching their ears — they’re still alive at the very least. “Just... don’t.”

So Petra bites her tongue, the inside of her cheek, draws her lip between the teeth and gnaws on everything she wants to say, everything she feels she owes JR. The apologies that sit waiting, waiting, waiting to be said but not heard.

Her heart twists with a sharp contraction of her diaphragm, and Petra stares down at the body, too, refusing to let the tears fall, while Jane, because she’s Jane now not JR, pulls out her phone, presumably to call for help.

Petra watches, throat tight, arms folded almost defensively over her chest. Fights the continuous urge to _explain_ again, to tell Jane that she didn’t want to lie, didn’t want to hurt her — that it was for Anna and Elle because no one was going to protect them.

But Jane stands, statuesque, highlighted in the doorway of Petra’s suite, distant and deliberately putting space between them when there used to none.

Puts up a wall that is all too familiar, and Petra swallows, digs her nails deeper into her arms. Reinstates her own fragile, flimsy barriers that were broken down far too easily by a woman who smirked a little too suggestively, a woman who offered kindness when no one else did.

A woman with a touch that tethered Petra to the here and now.

And they stand at the crossroads, their lives splitting apart when they only just began to connect, were about to twine and intersect more fully.

Petra hates looking back, hates peering over her shoulder at mistakes she can’t fix — a past she continues to run and run from because she knows the minute she falters, she falls. She can only move forward, without Jane Ramos. Alone.

(But oh, this is the one time Petra doesn’t want to.)

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! catch me on tumblr @fulmentus (:  
> title from: the scientist - coldplay


End file.
